


you've got the beat

by pr1nc3ssp34ch



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Misunderstandings, Musicians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 05:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr1nc3ssp34ch/pseuds/pr1nc3ssp34ch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"emiscary: scydia au in which lydia plays the violin and scott is in a rock band and they clash even though scott actually admires lydia (which he would tell her if he could could get a world in edge wise) because lydia is determined to dislike him from the beginning but it all ends with them making out on the empty high school stage and ruining the drama’s club bed set piece for their product of sleeping beauty because, well, she’s hardly going to go against everything she’s been shouting about for months on a dusty, sticky stage when there’s perfectly good sheets right over there"</p>
            </blockquote>





	you've got the beat

**Author's Note:**

> Posted from tumblr as requested!

"Hello? Delinquents!" 

 

Though the guitar  _is_ pretty loud, Lydia’s shrill voice seems to cut through the noise. The feedback from McCall’s guitar is more grating than any shout of hers could be, before he unplugs it, hand on the back of his neck, slightly sheepish and frowning all at once. 

 

"Yes, Lydia?" 

 

A drumstick crashes, and she knows it’s McCall’s friend, Stiles, the one who’s lusted after her since before he knew what the word meant. She’s glad he doesn’t have a microphone - she’s angry enough without having to deal with him tripping over his words. McCall will do just fine.

 

"I can’t even hear myself  _think_ over this trash,” Lydia remarks, fists clenched, “Let alone practice. Who the hell authorizes you to practice in here, anyway?” 

 

"Ms. Gold," McCall tells her. "There’s down time between the musical getting over and the play next month where this place is free." He looks a little bit awestruck - she wonders if Stiles’ ramblings have rubbed off on him, then decides it doesn’t matter. 

 

"I’ll talk to her, then," Lydia says promptly. "In the meantime, since you supposedly have permission,  _turn the speakers down._ Some of us have  _real_ music to play?”

 

McCall sighs and nods, and the third kid looks a little mutinous, but Lydia doesn’t have time for any of it. She walks out of the auditorium without a backwards glance, the next four bars of her latest original piece constructing again in her mind’s eye.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Of course it happens again. And again. And again. Boy bands are the bane of her existence (she does  _not_ have that catchy One Direction song titled as Claire de Lune (string quartet) on her iPod, she  _doesn’t_ ), and this one is no different. They’ve quieted down, but the rhythm of the bass throws her off every time she gets into a good spot, and the sounds of McCall singing cause her to write the wrong note at least twice a day.

 

Lydia never gets her notes wrong.

 

She tells them to stop, consistently, but they never do. They get a little quieter for a day, but they’re at it again the next, battering her senses with their offensive muck.

 

This time it’s so irritating she doesn’t even bother putting down her violin and bow, because sitting even a second longer means she’ll have to listen through the walls to that grating sound a moment longer. She walks with a purpose - she walks to shut them the fuck  _down._

 

"Hey!"

 

The sound cuts, and the feedback makes her want to puke. “Turn it down. I need to perfect this piece in the next three weeks, or I wont get into Julliard. Can you tell me when playing this shit has ever been that important? Newsflash - it isn’t. Stop practicing in here. If you cannot restrain yourselves,  _try,_ or I’m going to sue you.”

 

She turns, and the boy who’s name she doesn’t know calls out. “For what?”

 

Lydia spins on her heels, smiling dangerously.

 

"I will absolutely find a way."

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

They do stop practicing for a few days, which is surprising. Sometimes she’ll hear something - guitar, maybe a voice, but now that it’s not so loud and irritating, she can push it out of her mind.

 

(Sometimes, when practice is over and it’s time to go home, she’ll hear him through the walls. Without all the instruments weighing down his voice, he isn’t - well, no. She can’t even go there, because the music he plays is an insult to the art.) 

 

Still, she can’t help but feel watched sometimes, on the days when there’s nothing but the sound of her violin and the notes flying behind her eyelids and singing through the air. It’s those days that she feels free, like something locked up inside her is finally bursting out, unfathomably and unendingly and it’s so terrifyingly real that she can feel her heart pounding.

 

It’s the only time Lydia Martin feels alive.

 

She doesn’t even notice McCall’s in the room until she’s finished the piece, chest rising and falling rapidly now that she can move it again without jostling her violin. She doesn’t jump, but it’s a near thing, and her eyes are narrowed at the sight of him.

 

He looks so  _ridiculous,_ with his hair growing out and falling into his face and those weirdly tight jeans that no man should ever actually wear. He looks like he’s trying out for the part of Mick Jagger. 

 

She hates it. She hates him. 

 

"You’re really good." That,  _that right there,_ is why she hates him. McCall always sounds like that - like a mean word hasn’t ever come out of his mouth. It’s such bullshit; no one is always sincere, no one is always kind. If there’s anything Lydia has learned, it’s that.

 

Instead, she smirks while she packs up her violin. “I’m the best,” she replies, fitting her bow smartly into the case. “I’m glad you’ve finally realized it.” 

 

McCall is leaning on the doorframe, hands in his pockets, studying her. He’s blocking her way out.

 

"Excuse me."

 

He doesn’t move. “You’re really, really good. Everyone knows it. And I think you could get into Julliard.” Could?  _Could?_

 

"But it sort of sounds," he continues, pushing off the door, "Like you’re not really putting in much heart." McCall gives a sad head shake. He looks like a puppy. She’s getting ‘advice’ from someone who looks like a  _baby animal._

 

"That’s what music is all about, you know."

 

"Get out," she tells him, furious and roiling with indignation.

 

Scott goes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Who the hell  _is_ he? To tell her she doesn’t have  _heart?_ Scott fucking McCall, a nobody who can’t even pass chemistry. Does he get off on this shit? On infuriating her? It’s probably the tight jeans cutting off the circulation of  _blood_ to his  _brain._

 

She corners him not two days later, in the halls after school. He’s sitting on the ground with his acoustic guitar in his lap, singing some top 40 song she doesn’t care about and doesn’t want to hear. His voice is surprisingly good (not that she didn’t know that already), but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that he plays garbage  _well,_ because he’s insufferable, and she hates him.

 

She does.

 

Lydia wont be so undignified as to lower herself to the ground - instead, she steps on his thigh, digging her heel right in. Scott yelps, scrambling and almost dropping the guitar right onto her. “ _Christ,_ ow, Lydia!” 

 

She smirks at him, eyes sharp, mouth so tense she feels her whole face might snap apart. “What do you think gives you the right to tell me I have no heart?”

 

Scott looks baffled still, but it quickly twists into a frown. “That’s not what I - “

 

"Who do you  _think -_ " she digs her heel in harder, and he winces, "you  _are?_ ” _  
_

He looks like he wants to sink beneath the tiled floor, and he should. He wont be that lucky.

 

"Did you think I wouldn’t  _care?_ Of course you did, because I don’t have enough  _heart._ Do you think I don’t  _know_ what people say about me?” She leans down slightly, so he can see the full extent of her anger. Her voice is quiet now - there’s no need to yell to convey a point. “Frigid bitch,” she quotes, “With a bow stuck so far up her ass even Jackson had to leave the country just to stop being around me anymore.” She leans more weight on her leg. “And maybe somewhere in that deep, cold heart of hers she’s got a feeling or two, but she sure as hell wont care what we say about her. All she cares about is that stupid violin.”

 

Lydia steps off him, setting her legs firmly on the ground once more. “The violin isn’t stupid. It’s an incredible instrument, and I’ve been playing for twelve years. If there’s anything,  _anything_ in the world that I put my heart into? It’s that. So you can shove that guitar’s neck right down your own throat before you say another word to me, McCall.”

 

She’s breathing too hard, and he looks like he isn’t breathing at all. 

 

"Are we clear?"

 

Scott doesn’t say a word. Lydia smiles.

 

"Perfect." 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Scott doesn’t bother her for a while, after that. Maybe a week. She’s only got four days left until her flight to New York, so she can only assume that it’s been a while. She’s glad he got the memo. Even his shitty band has stopped playing.

 

She’s right in the middle of turning a page when she hears his voice. “I can do that, if you want.”

 

Lydia doesn’t even stop playing. She can talk and play perfectly at the same time - he doesn’t affect her. He doesn’t. “Why would I want anything from you.”

 

The tempo changes to match her mood - angry and fast, the notes dancing hot across her spine. She thinks she hears him sigh.

 

"I know I hurt you, okay, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it in the way you thought I did."

 

The piece is almost finished. It’s slowing, and she can feel her heart slow too - she wonders how anyone could say she doesn’t play with heart. It beats as her metronome. 

 

He waits it out, because of course he would - she knows enough about him in passing to know that. And when she draws her bow across the string a final time, he claps.

 

It’s infuriating.

 

"Why are you here?"

 

Scott moves closer, and she wants to scoot her chair back, but she wont. She has too much pride for it. “I wanted to apologize. I wasn’t trying to imply that you didn’t love what you do. I mean, I was irritated - you call everything I do trash. But it still isn’t right to try and hit you hard like that, too. I didn’t mean it that way.”

 

Lydia packs her case while he talks, but doesn’t shut it, turning to look at him and crossing her arms instead. “And in what way could you have meant it?”

 

"It isn’t transferring into your music," he explains, rushing the words a little. "Everyone knows you love violin - but when you play, everything’s exactly perfect. It’s cold… calculated to please, but it’s not -  _you_ aren’t in it.” 

 

She grits her teeth. Who cares if she isn’t in it? What the hell does that even  _mean?_

 

"You write music, don’t you?"

 

Lydia nods once, slowly. 

 

"I think you should play it." Scott seems to forget to add on, and then, "For your audition. Play your music. Play the stuff that comes from your heart. Because the other stuff, it’s really good… but it’s not different. Everyone’s gonna go in there and play some stuffy old guy’s piece exactly like he did in the 1800’s. But you… you could be different. You could make an impression, because you would be yourself."

 

Scott actually looks pretty proud of himself, and Lydia is too, in a way. She had no idea he could actually make a well rounded argument. He certainly doesn’t show it off in English, though to be fair they’ve never been in the same group. She’s a little ashamed to admit she’s considering it, but he admitted he was wrong, and he didn’t even have to be taught like Jackson. 

 

Lydia wonders if sometimes there are circumstances that throw things into a light that makes them more gruesome than they really are in the pure light of day.

 

"I’ll take it into consideration," she tells him, trying to keep her voice formal. "Now get out." 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Her heels clack ominously through the audition room. It’s like they’re echoing all the voices in her head. She has her case in hand and a bag strapped over her shoulder, music in a small folder inside. There’s a decision weighing on her that even now she can’t seem to shake, or to make permanent.

 

"Lydia Martin?"

 

"Yes," she says clearly across the room. The examiner nods. 

 

"Whenever you’re ready."

 

She sets down her case and kneels, popping it open and taking out her freshly polished instrument. It almost gleams under the warm lights of the audition space, and she takes a breath.

 

She doesn’t touch her bag.

 

"I will be auditioning with an original piece."

 

The panel raise their eyebrows, but they motion the okay, and she sets her violin on her shoulder, fitting her chin into the piece. Lydia raises her bow, setting it on the strings, and then she begins to play.

 

Her own piece is nothing like the one she’d been practicing. It has several acts, some cold and sharp, some shy and warm, but all of them are like little pieces of her. Her penchant for manipulation, the way she gets lost in her own mind, the way she sees the notes like technicolor paintings all laid out behind her eyelids when she dreams. They’re all the pieces of the puzzle that makes up Lydia Martin, and by the time she gets to the end, tears track down her cheeks. Because if they don’t accept her on this, they will never accept  _her._ Not really.

 

And maybe that was Scott’s point all along.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The band starts playing again, when Lydia gets back from New York. They play every day, and about a week into waiting on an acceptance letter, she sits in the back of the auditorium.

 

It’s too dark for anyone to see her (she hopes), but none of them say anything, so it’s probably true. They sing and play and dance across the stage (well, Scott and Isaac do [that’s his name, at last], while Stiles fools around on the drums), and she never once sees them do anything but smile.

 

They must put their heart into it as much as they can. She doesn’t know why they bother - she still doesn’t have a taste for the music - but Scott’s voice, when she can hear it properly in rare moments of minimal instrumental backing, is sort of beautiful, on it’s own.

 

In watching them she realizes, without all the stress on her shoulders and the weight of her audition looming ahead, that they should be allowed to have fun. Not in the auditorium, of course, but maybe she could help them find a place to practice, when the play starts up again.

 

She reminds herself she hates him, Scott McCall and his floppy hair, but she can’t even lie to herself anymore.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


"I got in."

 

Scott looks up from where he’s playing guitar, in that same hall on that same floor. He stops and looks up at her, all warmth and kindness. She’s never had… a friend like that before. If that’s what she wants them to be. If  _he_ wants them to be.

 

"Say it again?"

 

Lydia rolls her eyes. “I got in. To Julliard.” 

 

Scott smiles, and then laughs, white teeth blinding in contrast to his warm skin. He stands, dusting off the back of his legs. “That’s great!” His guitar goes back into it’s case, and then they’re standing there, six feet between them, neither quite knowing what to say.

 

"I played something of mine," she admits, like it’s a hardship, but it makes Scott smile again. She realizes it’s kind of cute, when he does that. He’s never directed it at her before.

 

"I told you that it’d be great," he says earnestly, rocking forward on the balls of his feet a moment. "You have to go with - "

 

”-  _your heart,_ I know.” She smiles a little. “You sound like a Hallmark card, McCall.”

 

Scott rolls his eyes, and she laughs - she’s never seen an expression like that on his face before. “The world wont end if you call me Scott, you know that, right?”

 

A whole new side of Scott McCall. Lydia smirks. 

 

"Well is  _Scott_ opposed to hanging out with me tomorrow? Or does Scott have band practice?”

 

His mouth falls open, but after a moment, he smiles, soft and warm. “I think he can skip it just this once.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_six weeks later_

 

Scott kisses Lydia on stage, the day after Sleeping Beauty’s last showing. The set is still there, only parts taken away, and they’re sitting on the edge studying for finals when she turns and he kisses her, right over their open books.

 

Immediately, she slips a hand onto the back of his neck and through his hair, nails barely scratching at his scalp. He pulls away too soon - for her taste, at any rate.

 

"Get back here, McCall, I’ve been waiting long enough."

 

Scott laughs and presses it into her neck, pushing their books across the stage somewhere and kissing her for real, lapping sweetly at her lower lip before curling up along the roof of her mouth like he’s taken a class in  _sin._ She pulls him closer, closer, she really wants him all over her right  _now,_ no matter how long it takes to get his jeans off.

 

The moment is a little ruined when she hits her head hard on the stage floor.

 

"Ouch!"

 

Scott pulls away, breathlessly concerned, and that makes her laugh in spite of the pain in her head. “Are you okay?” he asks, frowning like a chastised puppy.

 

"They make it sound so much less painful in romance novels," she murmurs, pulling herself out from under him and into a sitting position before standing up and offering a hand.

 

"Come on."

 

Scott takes it and stands, too, following even as he asks, “Where are we going? Where did I throw our books?”

 

"Don’t know, don’t care, and we’re going… here."

 

She sits down on the set bed, looking up expectantly. It’s cheap, not nearly as comfortable as hers at home, but it’ll do.

 

"The  _bed?_ " Scott squeaks, suddenly sounding far more nervous.

 

Lydia smiles and stands again, pulling him down by the neck and straight into a kiss. “The bed,” she murmurs, and he nods, following her lead when she sits back down.

 

Scott’s not nearly as experienced as Lydia, but what he lacks there he makes up for in unerring enthusiasm. Each kiss is better than the last, and he goes from awkward to sure in increments, laying her down and crawling over her, kicking off both their shoes (it takes him a while but he gets there). He uses one arm to keep him from crushing her, but the other travels hesitantly down her side, like he can’t believe he can touch.

 

Lydia rolls him over, straddling his waist and leaning down to kiss him, once, twice, three times. “How far do you want to go?”

 

Scott breathes out, hard, and swallows heavy. “However you want it, I want it.”

 

That’s such a  _Scott_ thing to say - it makes her laugh. “Alright, then.” She takes his hand and brings it to her neck, moving it so it follows a path over her chest, stopping there a moment before following down to her hip. Scott’s face is flushed already. “Do something.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(Turns out Scott does  _something_ very well - he quickly learns that Lydia is absolutely not quiet, and that even a pillow to bite into is not enough when he gets the hang of it and brings her off with his tongue and her fingers to guide the way.) 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr [here](http://beastiehales.tumblr.com). 
> 
> Once, I did Sleeping Beauty: The Musical. Scott and Lydia should be glad they didn't participate. The whole thing was a disaster.


End file.
